~4 minute readAfter Hours: Games
The Leading Role in a Spy Thriller: Border Zone Presents Three Possible Missions
Interactive fiction has taken more than its share of knocks. Legions of the curious have tried a game or two, only to emerge from their adventures cursing and frustrated. The games didn't understand the language of the uninitiated, and so the uninitiated stayed that way.
Maybe this failure to communicate owes more to the subject of those games than the logic needed to understand them.
That logic is not beyond most people. These games present threatening situations and invite you to save yourself by barking out commands to the game. Deducing each game's quirky reasoning is simply a mutter of patience: try anything, but learn from your mistakes.
Until now, interactive fiction has grown under the blanket of fantasy and science fiction. Star Trek and other space jaunts have lent their mystiques to "destroy-the-alien" adventures; The Lurking Horror treads through H. P. Lovecraft's dark territory; and Zork dwells in damp dungeons haunted by wizards and elves.
Everyone enjoys a good story. but many of us are unwilling to venture into a land of dungeons and dragons, no matter how many thrills await.
You'll need total concentration to elude the three synchronized searchlights that the game using in this screen.
Border Zone, from Infocom, has hit upon exactly the right scenario for an interactive novel: an Eastern European espionage nest. You deliver secret documents in clandestine meetings and then get out of the country, while the police hover nearby. The rules are familiar only to those who grew up with James Bond and "Mission Impossible": for example, trust no one, never say more than you have to. and be ready to make a quick exit.
It was written by Marc Blank (which has got to be a nom de keyboard), the author of Zork. If you’re going to read a spy novel, it might as well be one of John Le Carre's, and if you're going to try interactive fiction, you might as well start with Marc Blank's latest.
Several hours after I boarded the train in Border Zone's Frobnia, I solved my first challenge: sneaking a document past machine-gun-toting police and passing it on to a Russian double agent. ProKey helped cut down on repetitive typing ("Walk North" "Walk South"). I used about 80 percent of the hints that the game reluctantly divulges, started to rely on the deep pool of sneaky habits I had acquired as a youth but thought were now in remission, and became completely absorbed. Two more chapters were waiting.
The hints are another reason why Border Zone may appeal to many who have shunned interactive fiction. You don’t have to pay extra for clues to the game's logic, just type Hints from the command line, and then repeat your request even after the game takes a parental attitude and tries to warn you off. On-line hints are long overdue in interactive fiction, and this ought to be the beginning of a trend.
With the first of three legs complete, it's a good time to take in the game's printed matter: the lavishly illustrated pamphlet "I Am Frobnia: Fortunate Tourists Guide and Phrasebook" (see sidebar "'Ouzna Gotcha' and Other Required Phrases"); a map of the terrain near the border; an ornate business card from a local merchant; and a matchbook, compliments of Frobnia's railway (if we can deduce anything about the railway service from the quality of the matches, expect your train to be delayed).
The rich detail in these souvenirs adds to the Interactive feeling. Only the map proves useful (in chapter 2), but the phrasebook enriches the atmosphere. It gives Border Zone a sense of mission, unlike other games where you sometimes wonder if anybody, other than the head programmer, ever really knew what was going on.
Chapter 2 creates a good chase that rises to edge-of-your-seat urgency at the climax. You’ll need total concentration to elude the beams of the three searchlights that constitute one of the final hurdles at the Frobnian border.
You play different roles in each chapter, and since your goals in the first two are straightforward, you'll hardly care. But chapter 3 is full of plot twists and double agents. I felt a little cheated that the work I had done in the first two chapters wouldn't help here.
But, hey, the life of a spy is thankless. Your only satisfaction comes when a mission is accomplished. And when your logic is understood.
List Price: Border Zone, $39.95.
Requires: 192K RAM, one disk drive, DOS 2.0 or later.
Not copy protected. Infocom Inc., 125 Cambridge Park Dr., Cambridge,
MA 02140; (800)262-6868.
This article appeared in
PC Magazine
29 Mar 1988
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